


The Psky Is The Limit

by archea2



Category: Psmith - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Aliens Made Them Cricket, Alternate Universe - Space, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Mike in trouble, Psmith to the rescue, or did they
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28310553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: “As this ship’s Orator, my mission is still as it was in the beginning and shall ever be, world without end. It is to hail any message sent by comrades from outer space and pass it on to you verbatim. Well! The hour, I say, has come. The Word has come into being. Here comes Psmith, bearing news of great mirth: the intercom has spoken.”(AMike and PsmithSpace AU)
Relationships: Mike Jackson & Rupert Psmith
Comments: 20
Kudos: 22
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The Psky Is The Limit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blurble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blurble/gifts).



> Dear Blurble,
> 
> Your Psmith in Space prompt was irresistible - in fact, I got a bit carried away with it! And had to give myself a crash course in cricket, which probably shows. Here's hoping the resulting caboodle still makes a lick of sense, and here's wishing you a Happy New Year and Yule.

If, to quote a past luminary, every school is a beacon of hope sent through the dark and mysterious reaches of the future, then Sedleigh Space Academy was at best a tail light. 

While it did its duty to king and country in delivering its triennial quota of young hopefuls, most of these opted to live the lives of the vertically grounded on Earth Albion. The eternal silence of infinite spaces, so dear to the philosopher, left them cold. The galaxy was all right for a rag or two, they might tell a crony over a pint at Ye Olde Underground, but it wouldn’t do to have too much of it. No, really. A chap had to know where he stood, and the galaxy, by essence, failed in imparting a clear idea of where his turf ended and the other chap’s turf began, which could make a pretty pickle of turfs in this day and space age. 

Solemn nodding from the crony.

“Tell the gentleman about the Old Bots’ game, Mr. Spiller,” the landlord would then say. (Mr. Spiller was well noted among publicans. True to name, and full of tales that always entailed another round or three.)

Mr. Spiller would coyly decline on the ground that the gentleman could not possibly care for another space yarn. The crony, spotting his cue, would be loud in caring. Mr. Spiller would then make use of the next lull in the pub’s atmospheric bustle by dropping casually that there were Jovians involved. Having ensured the multiplication of his audience by a coefficient last seen in Galilee on a bright fish-and-bread day, he would proceed to set the stage. 

“Well, it was that year, you see, when Thingummy beat What's-his-name in the general election and the rain never let up. It was my second year as a Sedleigh cadet, and I’d made it to the school team just in time for the Old Bots’ game and my maiden voyage aboard the HMS Downing. Normally it was all cramming till Third Year before they let you set aboard the bally thing; but the bots had made a pother over the rain and their joints, as bots will, until the then Headbot gave in and rerouted the game to their home planet of retirement. Luckily it wasn’t too far off, a mere matter of lightyears, and Commander Downing…”

* * *

The Head, like all Heads (whether attached to human shoulders or, as in the present case, a cylindrical frame) had couched his instructions to Commander Downing very clearly. The journey was to be a debut in the fine art of ship steering - an occasion to _docere_ while _delectare_ by letting the young things have a (supervised) go at the real thing. Commander Downing had accordingly sprinkled his charges in various posts of command, as per their training. The extra specimens loaned for the game by his fellow Commanders he had dealt with fairly but a tad more vaguely, with two exceptions: the ship’s Orator, a position so far claimed by one and one only trainee, and Mike Jackson. Commander Downing had no objection to welcoming Mike the cricketer among his crew; it was Mike the cadet to whom he objected on principle. That the latter had a tendency to court trouble had been made vastly clear to him in their previous shared school year. It warranted a “You will sit where I have my eye on you, and sit as _tight_ as a static electron” caution in the Commander’s customary not-incertain terms, although he had relented enough to add, “Until the game. Plenty of opportunity then for you to move, Jackson.”

And Mike had duly sat, and later moved duly. 

His moves, however, had not been felicitous. To Mike, licket (or _laser cricket_ , as the Old Bots made a point of calling it) was a thing of beauty and spiffing good joy - if not for ever, at least for his three years at the Academy. But it was proving itself a more devious sport than its heavier, earthbound ancestor. The bowler of yore only had to plan his swing according to strength, sight, and whether the ball might be agreeable to bounce. The licket bowler was expected to wield a ball packed with enough sensors to detect the wind force, the sun declination, the flap-flap of a tardy British swallow doing its perspiring best to join the flock, or the umpire’s spot of stomach gurgle. How and where it would bounce tended to produce a difference of opinion between the ball and its temporary owner.

Likewise, the lightbat, while allowing a far greater scope of action (and a far greater distance between the main two protagonists than before) had a tendency to overstep the line when the batsman - in the present case, Mike - displayed an excess of zeal. So far, zeal had repaid Mike well. A batsman is, after all, expected to overstep the line: if he sends the ball past the field boundary, more power and glory to his side. 

But the planet where the retired Headbots were put to pasture every other century by the Academy’s Board of Trustees had; among other particulars, a reduced gravity. This was much appreciated by the heavier and rustier pensioners, notably during the one-day games. Even your state-of-the-art robot will enjoy a little soaring or hopping across the pitch - a pitch, let us repeat, that now covered several yards - when due to compete with eleven strong-legged boys.

The strong-legged Mike had still counted on scoring his hundred runs. But he had forgotten that the ball he played with had been powered up so as to take the gravity factor, or lack of, in stride. This ball was the school’s pride and joy - a hawk among pigeons, the One Ball To Rule Them All. For it would still dash and fuse across the zero-G ether where the average ball would have been content to float before the bowler’s nose in a state of perplexed stupor. Hence Commander Downing’s worship of the Ball, which he only (and reluctantly) entrusted to the boys when disputing a match on an anti-gravity field. 

And this came with a caveat. Due to the Ball’s super-extra-willingness to dash, the boys were under terse instructions to avoid any and all wide arcs. The pride and joy was to be bowled low or middle so as to be easily retrieved. Likewise, it could and should be batted outside the field (which had been surrounded by deflector shields) but from a strictly horizontal or downward angle. _Under no circumstances ever must the pride and joy be spun or batted upwards_. There had been one unhappy precedent, when it had eloped so far up and away into the sky that it had taken a dishevelled Commander six hours and his caninoid’s digital flair to track it down.

The Old Bots knew the Rule of Ball. As did Commander Downing’s cadets, players and spectators all.

But Mike was an Outwood cadet. One who, furthermore, had spent the outward flight sitting under the Commander’s eye and close enough to the Commander’s bark to discourage any friendly tip-off prior to the game. As for Commander Downing, his own brand of zeal made him deaf to the assumption that his Rule might have eluded the new boy. Consequently, he had donned his spacewhites and prepared to enjoy a jolly good game followed by a refreshing freeze-dried tea (oil for the other side) under the stars. 

And then he had watched Mike Jackson _whack_ his darling up into a vertical frenzy. Not only had the p & j become a wide ball at Mike’s capable hands - it had become a lost ball. And lost it had remained, despite the ballhunt deployed by bots and boys, and Sammy the caninoid. Even now, while the HMS Downing flew home ruefully, there were Old Bots scanning the sky in case the ball showed the true Cinderella spirit and plopped down at some point between oil-time and midnight. 

Meanwhile, Mike stood on the starship bridge being horribly told off. If there was one thing at which Commander Downing was a dab hand, it was how to roast a culprit - at full heat, and before a full audience. Even the hardiest cadet’s lip had been known to quiver like jelly under a Downing telling-off, with no one holding it against him - with, indeed, the wincing shared and shared alike by his peers, who felt that it was not cricket to roast one in public, least of all about cricket. Mike knew this, and struggled to keep the shamefaced heat away from his face, but he was only seventeen - an age tender enough for the slights and arrows of an outrageous scolding to sting like heck. Right now he felt very small, very mortified, and very angry.

“... had to cancel the game, _and_ the tea, and what Headbot XT-5 will have to say about the loss of an irreplaceable school trophy - all because of your abominable refusal to listen, not now, Smith. I will not have this team’s effort ruined by your hotheaded, irresponsible delusion that you are above being notified by those in a position - I said not now, Smith - to tell you what’s what. Well, think better. The moment we land, I shall speedwrite to your father; and the Headbot will take the most severe - _what is it now, Smith?”_

Mike looked up. Psmith’s long form was indeed poised between them - centerstage in that red-hot zone of discontent, yet looking as fresh as if he had just risen from a bed of cucumbers. His face was as bland as ever - a comfort to Mike in his hour of woe. Pity would have grated; condescension would have flayed; but there was this between Psmith and Mike that made the latter receptive of, and grateful to, the former’s knack of stepping forth into his friend’s predicament without departing himself of his quintessential strain of coolness. In that moment, Mike felt as if a gentle breeze had enveloped him.

“What,” Psmith said readily, “is what, indeed. Or, to quote a more fluent soul, a what is a what is a what, although I would say the present occasion calls for a who. For it is not in the nature of a what to practice the noble art of communication, save for Comrade Sammy who I understand has been upgraded to beep for his daily bone and say grace afterward.”

“Smith, if you have nothing serious -”

“As this ship’s Orator, my mission is still as it was in the beginning and shall ever be, world without end. It is to hail any message sent by comrades from outer space and pass it on to you verbatim. Well! The hour, I say, has come. The Word has come into being. Here comes Psmith, bearing news of great mirth: the intercom has spoken.”

Commander Downing blinked. The ship’s Orator was a role for the most part symbolic at a time when the Galactic Triple Entente ensured peace among humans, aliens and robots, whose communication boiled down to _Fine meteor rain we’re having, what?_ or _Would you mind awfully if I hyperdrove in your lane? The missus is having our octuplets in half an ⟟⋏ ⟊⎍⌇⏁ ⏃ ☊_ . But there lingered the odd chance that an unidentified alien ship, or botcraft, might cross wings with a human cruiser - in which case the Orator became actually useful as a travelling diplomat-slash-interpreter. At the time when Psmith had volunteered to train for the role, he had informed his superior, kind Commander Outwood, that in his opinion the noblest vocational interest was one in ancient extraterrestrial lore. This had been enough to ensure Psmith an en-suite bunk at the Academy (the lore, he deplored, was vast); it had ensured him a deck chair on the HMS Downing, in which he had spent the forward journey reading Mr. Conan Doyle’s classic, _A Study in Starlight_ , while the crew’s remainder were run off their feet by the Downing bark.

“And?” came a more sedate bark.

“Well, sir, it depends. Shall I give you the good news first, the bad news, or the you-pays-your-money-and-you-takes-your-choice news?”

The Commander’s wrath had by now fully turned away from Mike, although Psmith’s choice of words left it only with a bottleneck exit. It is not good form to kill the messenger when the message is yet to be parsed. 

“Will you stop blathering? Will you tell me who these blighters are and what they want?”

Psmith uttered the sigh of every Orator held at gunpoint to conclude. 

“In short, sir: Jovians.”

The crew gasped. Mike gasped. Commander Downing did not commit himself to anything so boyish as a gasp, but his breathing, already stertorous, skiddered to a halt. Jovians at the time were still more lore than fact; a wobbly, elusive species that mostly kept themselves to themselves, making it a signal difficulty for others to form a clear idea of their “selves”. It did not help that the chief Jovian attribute was a capacity to cloak themselves and their ships in invisibility. There was no knowing if humans were rated as excellent, very poor, or “ask me later” in the standard Jovian opinion poll. They always sent some sort of polite greetings to the various galactic councils, and they always followed it with the Jovian equivalent of “sitting this one out, have a lovely day”. Along the decades they had indulged in a little im-ex-teleport business, always digital, always conducted through a labyrinthine protocol of routers, hubs and satellites that bespoke their superior technical skills, but left humans in a blur as to whether the Jovians might one day step up their game to global takeover.

“Please, sir, may we go see them?”

A rising sound wave of oohs and aahs alerted Commander Downing to the fact that the command bridge was no longer a Scolding Only area.

“Oh, sir, may we _talk_ to them?”

“We don’t speak their lingo, Jellicoe, you ass.”

“Well, Psmith does, you silly mug. He can parley for us, can’t you, Psmith?”

“Bet you a quid he can’t.”

“Bet you a quid _and_ this week’s pudding he can!”

“Please, sir, may I ask the Jovians to sign my sketchpad?”

“And mine, sir?”

“Oh, rot, I left mine in the changing room.”

“It would be ever so nice to have a Jovian e-sign our albums, sir, instead of a grotty Old Bot.”

“That’s quite enough, Wilson!” Commander Downing, having recovered a firm grip on his own breathing, now put it to loud use. “Get back to your posts, all of you!”

“But, sir, the Jovians!”

“Sir, please, sir!”

“ _Adair!_ ” And the Commander, seized by a pang of _tu quoque_ at the sight of his favourite, banged the nearest titanium panel. “Enough! E-nough, all of you! I cannot have this ship plummet off course due to your collective desertion. Stone and Robinson, to your posts. Jellicoe, no talking for a week. Put the jump drive on hold, Adair, while I investigate the matter. Smith, follow me.”

As the Commander plunged ahead, the cadets leaping right and left at his approach, a nonchalant Psmith asked Mike, “Coming?”

“Should I? I mean, you’ve heard Downing. If I get sacked my father will be utterly sick, even if it’s not my fault I didn’t know about the beastly ball.”

“Solar storms may break our bones,” Psmith reflected aloud as he steered his friend to the comm bay, “but Comrade D.’s next words will not hurt you, upon my own. Far from it. Picture to yourself as you must have done, a blue-eyed boy at your nurse’s knee, Sir Galahad slapping his pure forehead at the end of the day and crying out, “The Grail!”. No? No picture? Let us, then, skip a brace of centuries, and have you picture Christoper Columbus on his ship, a-slapping and a-crying, “The egg!”. There yet? Excellent. Now stop picturing and start perking up. Three, two, one...”

“THE BALL!”

There they were, in the comm bay, facing Psmith’s work asset and prime alibi for leisure: the vast intercom that could speak a thousand languages (though not Jovian) and relay a billion visuals of all lives through the chambers of space. The intercom, as a rule, shushed - a Sedleigh ship was too small a blip to register on radars by and large, let alone incite them to chit-chat. But now the bay was being filled with hissy static, while the screen showed a dozen aliens wagging their elongated heads above a medley of tentacles...

... one of which did cradle the pride and joy in its terminal pad.

Commander Downing all but reeled at the sight.

“There,” said Psmith. “Let us rejoice with friend Downing, for he hath found the piece, &c. Shall we clap? Or burst into smiles?”

“He looks dashed unrejoiced,” Mike muttered. 

Indeed, the Commander’s nostrils still showed an irritable cast. “What is the meaning of this?” he asked Psmith. “Who are these people, and how did they get hold of my Ball?”

“Ah,” said Psmith. “I regret to say that my command of Jovian is still toddling on. But from what I gather, the credit for this encounter goes wholly to Comrade Jackson’s masterful arm, which, with a helping hand from the stratosphere, sent the ball on its diplomatic mission. The ball then got in touch with their reactor. Or, perhaps, their antenna. As I said - toddling steps.”

The Commander’s nostrils bristled. 

“Well, tell them to teleport it back. It is bad enough that Jackson’s foolishness cost us a game; we need to be on our way. I have informed the Headbot that we’d be back early for supper, after which we are to confer on a grave disciplinary matter.”

He was surprised when Psmith did not answer. Psmith was not one to be ever lost for words; but in that moment he appeared to ponder. While doing so, he took his monocle (1) and snapped it onto his eye, honing his focus on his interlocutor. Commander Downing prided himself on his piercing gaze; but he found the monocle a hard competitor. 

“Have you heard me, Smith?”

“My hearing, sir, is currently sterling.”

“Then why are you not translating?.”

“Why indeed. Why the hitch? The snag? Why the _crux traductorum_? Why, if not that they who hold the ball call the tune? As evidenced” - Psmith pointed to the screen, where the Jovian could be seen tossing the ball between one tentacle and the next - “here.”

It appeared to Commander Downing that he hadn’t got the entire hang of breathing back.

“They... they have conditions?”

“Just so. Not unreasonable ones, at that. Will you hear them, sir?”

The Commander, a Doubting Thomas when it came to all speeches Psmith, glared at the monocle. “Put them on speaker,” he said.

Psmith uttered a few languid hisses and pushed a button. The Jovian possessed of the Ball waddled forth, his head now split vertically by a horizontal crevice. “Greetings,” he intoned. “We come in psspace.”

Commander Downing frowned. “That would be peace.”

“Space, actually.” Psmith sighed. “We have yet to reach an understanding on which P’s are sounded, or not, when placed before the snaky letter. Still. Infant steps.”

“Can I inquire,” the Commander barked, “what your provisos are for the safe passage of this ball?”

The vertical split closed up. The Jovians turned their blank faces to one another. Then they turned to Psmith. More hissing ensued on either side.

“It’s like this, sir. Our Jovian friends feel - again, not unreasonably - that they have been issued a challenge. This ball, they say, is no bally stroke of hazard - it is a sign and a portent. And since it is in their court, to pile the symbolic upon the literal, they mean to take it up. They see no reason not to take it up. They jolly well will take it up - _qua_ logical beings, and _qua_ sportsmen. Well. Sports vertebrates. They have fourteen grammatical genders, which makes -.” 

“Are you telling me” - the vein on Commander Downing’s neck was flaring up anew - “that we are being blackmailed into playing what might not even be a gentlemen’s game? By Jove, I -”

He paused under Psmith’s chagrined stare of rebuke. 

“Better not take their name in vain, sir.”

By now an exultation of cadets had alighted in the new venue, ready to enjoy the drama with a clear mechanical conscience since the ship engines were being held up. “Are we playing the Jovians, sir?” flew from one eager mouth to the next.

“Absolutely not!”

“Oh, but, sir, the game!”

“Please, sir, the autographs!”

“I don’t think the Headbot will approve if we fly back without the school trophy, sir,” was Adair’s pious contribution. 

Commander Downing felt the beads of sweat prickling his brow and the crown of his hair. Brutus was right; Cesar felt the stab, but could not object. He had been prepared to chalk up the loss of the Ball to Jackson’s indocility, but if he now ordered the ship to back away with no attempt whatsoever to retrieve it, the chalk would change sides; he, not Jackson, would be to blame. And who was to say how the Jovians, gentle-aliens as they seemed, would respond if he flouted their request?

There remained, of course, the matter of the fourteen genders. Not to mention the matter of _clothes_ , which was another whole kettle of -

As if reading his thoughts, Psmith intervened with his customary patience. “They are game if you are, sir. I have made it clear that we did not have time to dally for more than a turn.”

The Commander’s sleeve conveyed its discreet sympathy to the Commander’s brow.

“Thank you, Smith. I… I suppose I had better go and bat, then.”

“That’s the spirit, sir. We are, after all, a very keen ship.”

“I dare say,” came the limp reply. “But where the dickens am I to play?”

“Why, aboard their cruiser, sir. It’s bigger on the inside - they carry their field with them, as I was given to understand. Here, let me show you.”

More hissing. The Jovians bobbed keenly on the screen, their bouncing an opportunity to display more and lower tentacles. With some trepidation, the Commander saw that he had been correct in one surmise - aliens, like Athenians before them, favoured athletic nudity. He watched as one tendril brushed the screen, causing the image to morph into a colossal field covered with criss-crossing lines. They appeared to draw a geometrical figure not unlike the philosopher David Hume’s chiliagon with its 1996 sides and corners. 

The background hiss increased, as did the bouncing. Obviously, the Jovians thought nothing of visiting 1996 corners in order to score a run. The Commander glanced down at his mere two legs and switched sleeves.

“Are there… are there eleven of them?” he croaked. “We might be late for supper after all.”

“An inquiry shall be made at once,” said Psmith. He turned to the screen and hissed genially, turning now and then to acquaint his audience with his verbal progress. “It seems that our Jovian friends are unfamiliar with base ten. I may have to… twelve? Eighteen? Oh, very well. Comrade Jackson, you are more of a mathlete than I shall ever be. Using base eighteen, how many Jovians will cricket if we multiply the crew by an aeon of runs?”

But Commander Downing no longer heard him. A red veil had descended before his eyes and turned him from a vertical to a horizontal commander. As his luck would have it, Psmith was quick enough to catch him in the course of his metamorphosis, and lay him down on the Orator’s deck chair with a mother's care. 

The screen cleared up, and the Jovians reappeared. “Pssick?” one of them asked with genuine concern.

“No, no,” Psmith assured his general audience, impervious to Spiller’s mutter of “He’ll be pretty sick at us when he wakes up.” “Comrade D.’s pulse will be perfectly sedate once it has scored a run of forty winks. Now, interesting as our little chat has been, I fear that we must go. Comrade Spiller, the computer room awaits your bright young eye. Comrade Adair, be the sport you are and save me a chair on the command bridge, by which I mean the middle one. Comrade Jackson, I shall be with you in a tick.”

Having thus cast himself as the ship’s enlightened despot, Psmith relapsed into the old hissing strain for the next minute. The Jovians bobbed politely, and, once the screen went black, Psmith claimed Mike again as a companion. Mike was only too happy to stroll along. The last quarter of an hour had been a trial to him, and he found it rather unfair that between the two of them, it was Commander Downing who was reaping the benefit of a return siesta.

“I say, you don’t think he’s having a stroke?” he asked all the same. Mike, being a Jackson, had always juggled a kind heart with a hot head, and even the prospect of being sent down from Sedleigh was not enough to make him wish his nemesis undone. 

“Of course not. In a few hours, Friend Downing will wake up brimming with his usual zest and jollity, never to speak again of this sacking nonsense. How do I know this? Because of the brave new room we are entering. "Brave new room" is your cue, Comrade Jackson, to which let me reply: "‘Tis new to thee." ‘Tis, in fact, the transporter room. Note the teleportation device, and, at the center thereof... lo and behold! Oh yes, the very same. Quick, put it in your pocket, and let us repair back to the command bridge. Sad as the prospect is, we still have our work cut out for us.”

“What do you - Great Scott! We're not driving this thing ourselves, are we?”

“Who else? Think, Comrade, and think carefully. What story is more likely to leave an impression - that of Mike Jackson misplacing a ball, or that of Mike Jackson saving the day and ship, _and_ school trophy, while the Man in Charge had a nice, restorative nap? Somebody will have to think twice of sacking you if they want the tale to stay unspun - like the ball. Oh, my dear Comrade, hush now. You’ll be calling me Rupert next, with a Continental _je ne sais quoi_ , and we cannot have that. Now pull up your sleeves, and let us show the hyperspace how to score a run.”

* * *

It was well past eleven that night when the Headbot of Sedleigh Academy retired to his rooms. There, as every night, he allowed himself a snifter of oil and a few Mozart bars, played from his memory circuit. All in all it had been a puzzling evening - Commander Downing had been unusually vague during their debrief of the Old Bots’ game, while the boys had been uncommonly excited over their late supper of rice pudding and jam. The Headbot had screwed together a number of cogs and bolts, and come to a more or less whole picture, but there was still a piece missing and he was resolved to find it before he laid the picture and himself to rest.

He glanced down at the little black key in his hand; then, with a soft whirring, he slotted it into one of his temples. Every Academy ship contained a number of these, hidden from boys and commanders alike; though it was seldom that the Headbot asked for their delivery. Now he closed one golden eye and one silver, and focused on the intercom archive. It only contained one record, that most humans couldn’t have parsed. But the Headbot had been programmed to master countless idioms, and it was no hard task for him to translate the series of hisses relayed by the key into the following dialogue:

CADET : Hullo? Hullo? Space ho and - er - all that, but I was wondering if any of you comrades had found a ball. We seem to have misled one, and it’s causing a bit of a brawl in my immediate vicinity. 

JOVIAN: Hail, Earthling. Please decline your being and your becoming while we process your request.

CADET: Always a pleasure. I am Psmith, and Psmith I am - you probably don’t have one in your alphabet, but I have to insist on the P before S in your letter heads. What Psmith will become is yet veiled in the mystical mists of time, but his short-term plan is a cross between the Clever Sidekick, the Loyal Adjuvant, and the Boy Who Threw Himself Into the Fire To Spare His Friend A Roasting. Now, that ball - or orb - or shape reliably held to be without angles - 

JOVIAN: Oh, yes, there was one obstructing our [unidentified hiss] only five minutes ago.

CADET PSMITH: Splendid. Perfectly splendid. And to keep up that refreshing note of optimism, could you teleport it back to us? Only, not just now. 

JOVIAN : You want to reflect on the human emblem of eternity while it is out of reach?

CADET PSMITH : Ah, there you have me. But while I do, could you do me one good turn? Trifling, really. You see, my superior (in name - nature still open to debate) could do with a spot of enlightenment, too, and I propose to procure him the same. If you could fetch the ball and hold it near the screen - yes, just so - I will go and fetch him.

JOVIAN : Happy to oblige, Being Psssmith.

CADET PSMITH : No, the P is actually not sounded.

JOVIAN : Psssory?

CADET PSMITH : … Never mind. We Psmiths can be true to name in spirit, if not in letter. Be back in a jiffy.

There was some more dialogue after that, interspersed with Commander Downing’s voice, although his objurgations grew fainter and fainter. Mostly, Cadet Psmith had continued to embroider on the theme of eternity, inquiring as to the Jovian’s own symbol for the same, which the Headbot now learned featured a golden number of lines and corners well beyond human computation. Cadet Psmith had politely begged for a visual. The Jovian had politely offered one. At this point there was a loud bump and the comm went dead soon after.

The Headbot took another sip of oil. It was a long while before he came to a conclusion and disconnected the key. Bots are not in a habit to beep aloud, but the Head indulged in a warble now and then, when his circuits felt overcharged with a new and unfamiliar energy.

“A curious human,” he now mused, as he carefully put the key away. “Very, very curious. But, I dare say - very, very human. And that is perhaps not such a bad thing.”

(1) The monocle, “a family tradition”, was said to house an English-to-alien dictionary uniquely wired to a Psmithian retina. Or so Psmith said. Mr Smith, when asked to authenticate his son’s words, had said “Oh, well -” and dashed off to watch the house game.


End file.
